But the only thing that hurts Michael Vick right now is the criticism he receives for the way he plays football.

Vick wants you to know you cannot expect him to avoid every bit of contact that comes his way. He’s a different breed; somewhere on the quarterback scale between Peyton Manning, who avoids all contact and Tim Tebow, who tries to run over defenders.

“I understand that if I put my body in jeopardy or risk then I’m putting this football team at risk,” Vick said after practice Wednesday. “I feel like I’m being selfish to my teammates. It’s just something I have to gauge. We’re not going to try to change it at this point. And I think I can make it go.”

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Vick thinks his style of diving at the end of plays isn’t as dangerous as it used to be for he’s put on 10 pounds of muscle and has better body control.

Eagles head coach Chip Kelly realizes that Vick, at age 33, is comfortable with the style.

“I think that’s the way Mike likes to do it,” Kelly said. “I think that’s the way he’s going to do it. We’ve just got to make sure that we can put him in a little bit better situation than that. But I don’t think we’re going to get him to hook slide, I can tell you that.”

Vick’s insistence on blocking for teammates is another matter. On a couple of occasions Vick took shots at Redskins defenders while sealing the backside for Eagles ball carriers.

Kelly, offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur and a chunk of the players, including offensive tackle Jason Peters want to see him curb the habit.

“I talked to him during the game, after the game, on Tuesday,” Shurmur said. “I think it’s important. The one thing that I admire about Mike is something that we’ve all seen. He’s extremely tough, he’s very competitive and when the game is going on, he reacts to things like you want a football player to react. No, we don’t want him lead blocking on sweeps, and so we told him don’t do that. So we assume he won’t.”

Peters has a pretty big personal stake in Vick’s style as he guaranteed the Eagles would win more than four games this season.

“I told Mike, don’t do that again. Let me do it,” Peters said. “We don’t need him out there blocking. I mean, if it’s a key block and it triggers a touchdown, hooray. But we don’t need him out there blocking. We need him all 16 games.”

Vick was edgy when asked why he thought he should make those blocks.

“It was Monday night,” Vick said. “I figured I’d show up a little bit. I tried to give people what they wanted to see.”

Asked if he agreed it wouldn’t happen, Vick replied, “No, because it might happen again.

“I’ll try not to make it happen,” Vick said. “I’ll try not to do it but just the way we run the read option sometimes the (ball carrier) will be cutting back and I’m standing there. I’m not going to let my teammate get hit by a guy. Maybe I’ll just get in the way next time and just try to wall him off.”

When the quarterbacks watched film of Vick blocking the Redskins they reacted emotionally.

“We were laughing,” Barkley said. “He kind of fell down on one of them and we were laughing. But we understand Mike’s a gamer and he’s going to give it his all. It’s good to see.”

That’s what makes Vick who he is. It’s why he plays the game. And if that changes substantially, so will he. Possibly not for the better, either.